Darlington Dragway Has Another Series of Upgrades

Darlington Dragway was named International Hot Rod Association (IHRA) Track of the Year in 2016 and hosted one of the sanctioning bodies’ largest events in 2017.

That hasn’t meant the folks at the historic South Carolina track are resting on their laurels. Quite the contrary, there are more upgrades being made to the facility. It includes the first 750 feet of the track from the burnout boxes to about 150 feet past the 1/8-mile finish line to be all concrete.

In addition, there is a new drainage system has been installed with the track scheduled to host one of the new IHRA Summit Spectacular double-race weekends on May 25-27.

“This is something that we had to do,” Darlington Dragway General Manager Jimmy Bradshaw said. “This place has always had an issue with water, even back when it hosted the old IHRA Winternationals. You would have officials on the side of the track with mops, doing that over and over. We did the same thing with Shop Vacs. It causes so many problems where you have to do so much to scrape the track so this was what we chose to do.”

The track was constructed by Harold Brasington, who built Darlington Raceway in 1950, and Woodrow Hall under the guidance of IHRA founder Larry Carrier. It opened in 1976 and has played host to several major events in the years since.

Still, the track needed some tender loving care when Bradshaw came on board. After thousands of hours of hard work and sweat, it’s again a premier facility. It’s also the home of champions as Robert Anderson (Top) and Devin Smith (Junior) took top honors at the IHRA Division 2 East (Heat Wave) Team Finals in October.

Bradshaw uses his years of experience from working at his father’s Capitol Raceway in Maryland to improve the facility. He also keeps his eyes open when traveling with his racers to other tracks.

“We’re racers ourselves,” he said. “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. We look at different facilities and see what works and if we can implement them at ours. Anytime we’re there to race, but we’re also looking at how we can improve our facility.”